Raising the curtain on Edward II’s unpopular bedfellows

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Christopher Marlowe was about to appear before the Privy Council to answer accusations of atheism and treachery when he was murdered, stabbed above the eye in what might have been (but probably wasn’t) a mere pub brawl in 1593. The dramatist had supposedly said that St John “was bedfellow to Christ”, “leaned always in his bosom” and “used him as the sinners of Sodoma”. He had also been enjoying great success with his Edward II, which suggests that a medieval monarch was bedfellow to Piers Gaveston and, after his favourite’s killing by jealous barons, leaned in the bosom of one